Thursday, 16 June 2011

Isle of Wight Festival 2011

As you will know if you read my Simple Summer Accessorising post (thanks for the lovely comments guys), I was at the Isle of Wight Festival last weekend. I searched Google images just a moment ago for a nice photo to head this post, just a simple logo, something like that...I got so much more. I found the above photo taken by Alicia Canter for The Guardian. Despite seeing packs of photographers hunting for the perfect photograph at the front of the stage, all that I have seen so far have been quite poor. So Canter has produced the best results I have seen, but what makes this photograph extra special to me is this...do you see that girl right in the middle in the check shirt and a poncho that looks like a green bin bag (classy)? Well that’s me. The guy next to her in the brown t-shirt who‘s unintentionally pulling a funny face? That’s my boyfriend.

I know it’s a little sad, but I’m excited. I’m thinking ‘Shall we get in touch with the guardian and see if we can have a print?’ I admit it.

I want to make clear that I made no attempt to catch the attention of photographers. I say this because I found that there were a lot of posers and attention seekers at this festival. It lacked the laid back friendly attitude that Glastonbury Festival has. There was a sense that people were desperate to get noticed, get drunk and get laid and the music was just for bragging to your mates back home about. Far from my own heart, it seemed everything was disposable to this common breed of festival-goer. When you go to a festival there is a likelihood that everything you take my not come back. For me that means don’t take anything you wouldn’t want to be without and so aside from my boyfriend, I took nothing that had any value to me. I was horrified to find myself surrounded by people head to toe in brand new clothes making tea on their gas camping stoves under flashy gazebos. Later I would see them wave Blackberry’s and Iphones around in the rain like bait to help them find someone with drugs. My Blackberry stayed at home because I had pre-festival visions of insurance companies laughing in my face for asking if they’d replace my trodden on, mud sodden phone. I packed my £34 two person tent and carried it past the many discarded top of the range six person ones as I left. The only thing disposable; a disposable camera (yes they still exist...just about...I only managed to get one because my boyfriend works with a photo company.)

Still, I won't pretend I didn't care at all how I looked. Pre-festival I tried to create stylish outfits from my old clothes. There was no evidence of this during the weekend. When you’re trying to use a Portaloo as quickly as possible and avoid touching anything in there, five minutes of getting your tights in the right place is something you could do without. The poncho I am sporting in the above photo was £5 from the festival. It didn't rain that night, I was wearing it for extra warmth. It did rain the next day, all day, when the poncho had already been ripped to shreds in the crowd. In retrospect, £15 on the quite fashionable waterproof seen in a sale would have been worth it.

The most stylish outfits of the weekend for me were without doubt those sported by Eliza Doolittle’s band. I wish I could find a decent picture for you, but you can see them on this video.

Theres so much I could say but I'll wrap up.
Favourite Performance: Absolutley Pulp
Unsung Hero: Rusty Egan
Regret: Missing Foo Fighters
Stupid mistake: Not taking any form of time keeping or alarm

I apologise for the lack of photos on this post, as I mentioned, The Guardian's photos are the only good ones. I will post some of my own when I get them back - I cannot express how excited I am about seeing them. Amongst them should be a photo of some photographers as I was fascinated by their animal like behaviour, and as I said to my boyfriend ‘photographers always look cool, no matter old, no matter how good looking’.

Now I’m curious, Alicia Canter took a great shot of me, did I get one of her?